Jim's Plate: A Half Baked Puree Of iOS

Yesterday, the MGM Resorts International employee blog Momentum trumpeted the release of a new iOS app - Healthy Eating, Healthy You - a digital "greatest hits" of Jim's Plate from around the Employee Dining Rooms at MGM properties.

Unlike undercooked chicken and pork, this app won't kill you... but it will most likely make you sick. My first thought when I downloaded and opened this app was relief - relief in the fact that I didn't have to throw two bucks at it to see how bad it was. From stem to stern, this is probably, actually definitely, the worst app ever released by a casino.

Hey folks, that logo is a little off center... or is this one of those artsy fartsy City Center art project thingys. Oh, and the image behind the nav? Yeah... I don't think that jibes with Apple design guidelines. Not that Jim Murren's pet projects are known for working out.

"Healthy Eating, Healthy You" app is essentially a recipe book. Lord knows the world needs another recipe book, particularly one slapped together by a CEO whose claim to fame is saving the company from a bankruptcy he's largely responsible for.

A recipe app.

From a casino company.

Introducing... straight from the kitchens of Circus Circus... a recipe for scrambled eggs and toast!

A "half cup" of eggs?

Conversely, this one seems a little involved and requires a ton of ingredients.

While we're being all "Whole Foods Hippies" about this, is halibut a sustainable ingredient in Las Vegas?

Why a company saddled in massive amounts of debt would pay someone to gather, collate, test, photograph and build an app to showcase something that nobody but comedians and Vegas obsessives would have any interest in is beyond my understanding. Oh, right... let me guess... tax breaks? PR enticements from the U.S. Government's healthy eating program? Photo op with the Obamas? Or does Jim Murren really care enough about their employees to spend a ton of money making a half assed app that they'll never use?

The layouts are wonky, the navigation is confused and the whole conception is shoddy and half-assed, the Murren era at MGM in a lightly salted, pan roasted nutshell. I'll let you know how the toast and eggs work out.

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Comments & Discussion:

This app is awful, and it doesn't appear to do anything that a cross-platform mobile web page wouldn't.

I guess I'm okay with Murren as an executive. I wish MGM hadn't acquired most of the Strip, but he wasn't in charge when that happened. Loveman can't afford a can of paint. Planet Hollywood fell to the duopoly. Cosmopolitan has worse room operations than some Travelodges. Wynn, Adelson, and Ruffin are turning off vast swaths of the country with their political activism for a Presidential candidate.

Are you going to stay at the renovated Tropicana and Stratosphere out of principle? Go downtown? I know that I'd do it, but in my time I've met a lot of people who consider Mirage a baseline instead of a splurge. If someone wants to stay in some large iconic skyscraper that routinely gets buzzed by the CSI aerial crew, I'd suggest about half of Jimbo's over any of other people's, resort fees and all.

The app is certainly laughable, but I'll give MGM a slight pass, I'll take a moment for social commentary here, but this app represents to me what's completely wrong with corporations nowadays, maybe it's the social media nature or the world or some other reason we've got here, but the belief that some dopey HR project is so great that consumers are going to line up for the knowledge is ridiculous.

It's bad enough that corporations run these programs and think they are providing value to their own employees while cutting things that are valuable, now they want to they want consumers to buy into it. In a word, ridiculous. The sad fact is that it shows that people in MGM actually believe this collection of recipes is of some value, which is probably the saddest aspect of the whole thing.

This app is a perfect representation of what I find wrong with the Murren regime at MGM. It's a matter of instead of providing people with a service they want, corporations are believing that they are giving the public something they feel they need. That people need to be told what to have an interest in.

Murren and co. believe that just because they have a personal interest in healthy living, a green lifestyle, bland art, Wall Street tastes, French-Canadian entertainment, etc. that it doesn't matter if the average tourist does as well... they believe that average tourist SHOULD as well. To me, it comes across as very egotistical, even for a CEO.

I think MGM would benefit more in addressing what their customers want, instead of what they feel they should need. Diversify more, provide each property with a UNIQUE experience instead of one similar mindset that one person finds "ideal". Otherwise, the travelers' vacation experience (notice I said "vacation", not "personal interest lifestyle") will end up as bland and ill-conceived as this app.